Just out from CBS, sources are saying that the Director of National Intelligence was the office responsible for editing the talking points.

CBS News) WASHINGTON – CBS News has learned that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) cut specific references to “al Qaeda” and “terrorism” from the unclassified talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice on the Benghazi consulate attack – with the agreement of the CIA and FBI. The White House or State Department did not make those changes.

Clearly CBS is trying its best to insulate Obama from culpability and deflect the real issue to make it sound like this is really not a scandal. CBS does not do that good a job at that with this news:

However, an intelligence source tells CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan the links to al Qaeda were deemed too “tenuous” to make public, because there was not strong confidence in the person providing the intelligence. CIA Director David Petraeus, however, told Congress he agreed to release the information — the reference to al Qaeda — in an early draft of the talking points, which were also distributed to select lawmakers.

“The intelligence community assessed from the very beginning that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.” DNI spokesman Shawn Turner tells CBS News. That information was shared at a classified level — which Rice, as a member of President Obama’s cabinet, would have been privy to.

An intelligence source says the talking points were passed from the CIA to the DNI, where the substantive edits were made, and then to FBI, which made more edits as part of “standard procedure”.

Something stinks here. David Patraeus testified that he did not know who removed the mentions of terrorism that he approved of, so it seems unlikely that the CIA approved of the changes. The Lonely Conservative also notes that editing of the information was not just about editing out

What CBS conveniently leaves out is that while the DNI edited out terrorists from the talking points, the DNI is not being blamed for editing IN the idea that a protest occurred and violence was the fault of a video. Petraeus made it clear last week that the CIA knew there was no protest and the violence was not related to an escalating protest due to the video. The CIA knew from the beginning that this was an organized terrorist attack. CBS also makes it clear that even Rice was aware the CIA suspected it to be a terrorist attack.

All the media is trying to do here is again change the subject. The subject is why security was pulled from Libya, why the Ambassador had to go to Benghazi (a known terrorist hot bed) without security to meet a Turkish official, and why the administration blamed a video that no one in the intelligence community ever blamed.

So, basically, we are back to what we already know. The powers that be knew very early this was a terror attack, and not a protest. We know it had nothing to do with a video, and we know Team Obama bent over backwards to delete the truth and instead blame a video. The Director of National Intelligence is James Clapper, and he may get thrown under the bus, but I would not imagine that he took out the references to terrorism without being told to do so. For whatever reason (election) Team Obama did not want to admit that their sloppy handling of security had allowed a terror attack. Maybe Obama wanted his “Al Qaeda is on the run” line to go unchallenged. Maybe he did not want this to hurt his campaign, either way, this is looking progressively worse.

“Unclassified” talking points? I guess Rice cannot speak for herself. Makes her totally qualified for Secy of State… Keep investigating moot points to distract from the qualitative point…. No one backed up our military calls for assistance!!! 4 Americans died! May never know the truth, but you can only spin it 360 degrees before you get back to where it started…